Hi,
I wonder if anyone could give me some advice. There's a job I've just
taken on (a database driven web based virtual insurance policy thing)
which someone else had started previously in Java, but not got very far
at all and then walked away from. The previous programmer seemed to
generate an awful lot of code (using standard Java frameworks) which
achieved very little. Probably nothing in fact :)
Anyway, I'd really like to do it lisp, because I'm sure it would be
much quicker (basically I don't think I'd have time to do it in Java,
and I definitely wouldn't want to do it in PHP or Perl or anything).
The system will be in use for some time, and it's moderately complex.
The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
say to them?
Thanks,
-- David
David wrote:
> The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
> use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
> for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
> say to them?
I think that the best way is to say how you think that CL will save you
time (and, like you said, you'll write less code). Instead of just
talking, you could build very quickly a small prototype to demonstrate.
With it, you could demonstrate how you can/will expand it. About the
code being picked up by another developer, there is no insurance. If
you develop in PHP now, someone could come in the future and want to
redo it in Java, or Ruby, or whatever.
Pedro Kroger
From: Ari Johnson
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m2u009hnxh.fsf@hermes.theari.com>
"Pedro Kr�ger" <············@gmail.com> writes:
> David wrote:
>
>> The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
>> use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
>> for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
>> say to them?
>
> I think that the best way is to say how you think that CL will save you
> time (and, like you said, you'll write less code). Instead of just
> talking, you could build very quickly a small prototype to demonstrate.
> With it, you could demonstrate how you can/will expand it. About the
> code being picked up by another developer, there is no insurance. If
> you develop in PHP now, someone could come in the future and want to
> redo it in Java, or Ruby, or whatever.
I agree. If you can prototype it and go into the client's office
saying "I already did more than the previous guy did, and it only took
me 3 hours." you will be in good shape. Remember, actions speak
louder than words.
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <Ccodh.3016$E91.1159@newsfe12.lga>
David wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wonder if anyone could give me some advice. There's a job I've just
> taken on (a database driven web based virtual insurance policy thing)
> which someone else had started previously in Java, but not got very far
> at all and then walked away from. The previous programmer seemed to
> generate an awful lot of code (using standard Java frameworks) which
> achieved very little. Probably nothing in fact :)
>
> Anyway, I'd really like to do it lisp, because I'm sure it would be
> much quicker (basically I don't think I'd have time to do it in Java,
> and I definitely wouldn't want to do it in PHP or Perl or anything).
> The system will be in use for some time, and it's moderately complex.
>
> The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
> use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
> for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
> say to them?
This seems to be a terrifically relevant case study/success story:
http://homepage.mac.com/svc/RebelWithACause/index.html
Other than that, steer the client to Paul Graham's bit (the original
winning big article) and Fractal Concepts
http://www.fractalconcept.com/asp/pLt3/sdataQIx8-uxMZ0STDM==/sdataQuEY-NQ=
and Clozure http://www.clozure.com/
And even the Franz site. The RtL iff you think that will not scare them
too much. The others have the twin charms of at once reassuring your
client that Lisp is very much industrial-strength and that they need not
be bothered at all should you step in front of a bus.....uh, that came
out wrong.
:)
kt
--
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm
"Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five
years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally
won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
"David" <······@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
> I wonder if anyone could give me some advice. There's a job I've just
> taken on (a database driven web based virtual insurance policy thing)
> which someone else had started previously in Java, but not got very far
> at all and then walked away from. The previous programmer seemed to
> generate an awful lot of code (using standard Java frameworks) which
> achieved very little. Probably nothing in fact :)
>
> Anyway, I'd really like to do it lisp, because I'm sure it would be
> much quicker (basically I don't think I'd have time to do it in Java,
> and I definitely wouldn't want to do it in PHP or Perl or anything).
> The system will be in use for some time, and it's moderately complex.
>
> The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
> use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
> for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
> say to them?
I'm in the market to maintain Common Lisp applications.
So you can count +1 substitute.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll send the RebelWithACause case
study to the client, as it does seem very relevant. I think I have some
good ammunition now. The main issue from my point of view is the
development time. I don't know what the estimated productivity increase
factor is for Lisp versus Java is these days, but I expect it's a fair
bit.
I'd say that 8 hours and 18 minutes to find another maintenance
developer is pretty good :)
I think the bus thing _is_ what's on the clients mind. I'm starting to
get worried about buses to be honest - they do seem to be the leading
cause of hypothetical programmer death these days, as they've been
mentioned several times by people at the company I work for !!
-- David
David <······@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
+---------------
| I'm starting to get worried about buses to be honest - they do
| seem to be the leading cause of hypothetical programmer death
| these days, as they've been mentioned several times by people
| at the company I work for !!
+---------------
A company where I once worked worried more about developers
"decorating a tree" [i.e., crashing a car into one].
The "bus" thing is probably just a recent fad... ;-}
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <jeVdh.7$yB7.3@newsfe11.lga>
Rob Warnock wrote:
> David <······@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> +---------------
> | I'm starting to get worried about buses to be honest - they do
> | seem to be the leading cause of hypothetical programmer death
> | these days, as they've been mentioned several times by people
> | at the company I work for !!
> +---------------
>
> A company where I once worked worried more about developers
> "decorating a tree" [i.e., crashing a car into one].
> The "bus" thing is probably just a recent fad... ;-}
Clearly all the smart programmers -- the only ones we worry about losing
-- must have moved to NYC where no one drives, there are no trees,
everyone jaywalks, buses swim in pods and their drivers yield to nothing.
kt
--
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm
"Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five
years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally
won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
Rob Warnock wrote:
> A company where I once worked worried more about developers
> "decorating a tree" [i.e., crashing a car into one].
> The "bus" thing is probably just a recent fad... ;-}
Do they know that lispers could easily extract the car from the tree?
:)
On 6 Dec 2006 02:35:58 -0800, "David" <······@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I think the bus thing _is_ what's on the clients mind. I'm starting to
>get worried about buses to be honest - they do seem to be the leading
>cause of hypothetical programmer death these days, as they've been
>mentioned several times by people at the company I work for !!
>
In the US it is possible for a company to buy insurance against the
loss of a critical employee (such as a sole Lisp programmer). The
insurance provides funds for finding/training another person to fill
the job.
George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <MO_dh.8$XE3.6@newsfe09.lga>
George Neuner wrote:
> On 6 Dec 2006 02:35:58 -0800, "David" <······@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>I think the bus thing _is_ what's on the clients mind. I'm starting to
>>get worried about buses to be honest - they do seem to be the leading
>>cause of hypothetical programmer death these days, as they've been
>>mentioned several times by people at the company I work for !!
>>
>
>
> In the US it is possible for a company to buy insurance against the
> loss of a critical employee (such as a sole Lisp programmer). The
> insurance provides funds for finding/training another person to fill
> the job.
Yep. I had a $1m policy on my head at CliniSys. Glad I had forgotten
that by the time the wheels started to come off, might not have slept so
well.
:)
btw, Ron, that was 80kLOC of Lisp, all designed and mostly written by
yours truly in two+ years, and had to be meta-designed to handle
arbitrarly clinical trials varying widely in shape and size. Demos ran
flawlessly despite extensive changes completed at 2am that morning. I
think that stands up against two hundred people, ten years, and 500kloc
of PL/I.
And you /had/ heard about it. :)
kt
--
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm
"Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five
years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally
won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
In article <·············@newsfe09.lga>,
Ken Tilton <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> btw, Ron, that was 80kLOC of Lisp, all designed and mostly written by
> yours truly in two+ years, and had to be meta-designed to handle
> arbitrarly clinical trials varying widely in shape and size. Demos ran
> flawlessly despite extensive changes completed at 2am that morning. I
> think that stands up against two hundred people, ten years, and 500kloc
> of PL/I.
No, it doesn't. It is not even remotely comparable. It was not an
embedded system. It had no hard-real-time requirements. It's nice that
it ran flawlessly (though we have only your word for that) but if there
had been a problem people would not have died, at least not immediately.
BTW, you proudly tout the fact that you did this all on your own and you
were still making changes at 2 AM. To me that just shows that you don't
know how to manage a project, even one where the only person you had to
manage was yourself.
You may be a studly hacker, Kenny, but when it comes to space software
(or project management) you are utterly clueless. And your continued
condescension towards people who have spent years of their lives in the
aerospace trenches is extremely annoying.
rg
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <Ps0fh.135$1x6.118@newsfe09.lga>
Ron Garret wrote:
> In article <·············@newsfe09.lga>,
> Ken Tilton <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> BTW, you proudly tout the fact that you did this all on your own and you
> were still making changes at 2 AM. To me that just shows that you don't
> know how to manage a project, even one where the only person you had to
> manage was yourself.
Well, we were not demonstrating nor claiming to have a finished system,
so it was still in development and everyone (management, potential
partners, and I) knew it. Now normally what happens in timid (and often
wisely so) shops is that a week before a demo, development gets frozen
lest there be some catastrophe during the demo. In my case, I had
noticed that the software for some reason never broke. The only failures
came from what I had just changed, and after one clean run, it never
broke. I did marvel at this, because it was nothing like my experience
when doing an equally intense C application. In that case, the only
thing that /did/ work was the module (say the math editor) on which I
was working. Everything else (the math engine, the visual display) would
be in shambles.
What you want to spin as bad management was simply me making an
executive decision that I could add functionality up until 1am, test
until 2am, and then run a better, full demo flawlessly the next day. And
I was always right. Nice try, tho.
Speaking of which, your suggestion that I might be lying is really
charming, but I have twice had managers imply the same after i reported
finishing a task inconceivably fast (too them, not me), so I understand
your ignorance.
>
> You may be a studly hacker, Kenny
Well, I keep telling people that, but you seem to be the first person I
have fooled. Otoh, any time I pull something off and someone accuses me
of lying, I realize I am so far out of /their/ particualr league that
they end up inadvertently suggesting I might be lying. Your suggestion
seemed less inadvertent. Did I mention how charming that was?
>... And your continued
> condescension towards people who have spent years of their lives in the
> aerospace trenches is extremely annoying.
Is that not the mistake that killed fourteen people for no reason?
Drawing the wagons in a circle and refusing to analyze the process? That
is all I did. What they found /both times/ was that the process failed.
You paint my bug post mortem as antagonistic, hoping to stifle it. You
are annoying yourself. I imagine such managerial annoyance is exactly
how people were intimidated into not saying what needed to be said.
What NASA needs to do (if my guess at a post-mortem is right) is simply
publish the post-mortem: "this problem might have been noticed if the
coder was less robotic. Programmers still have to adhere to the spec
religiously and push back on possible problems thru the proper channels,
but they should not turn off their brains." This is a process fix, not
--what was your spin?--condescension or blame.
Btw, if you have any friends left at NASA, I would be interested in
knowing how often the coders look down and say, "This is away from
goodness."* If it is commonplace, my hypothesis starts to crumble. It
would be really great then if you could ask for the post mortem on the
bug itself, since the article Paolo found mentioned they always review
the process when something sneaks thru.
Of course your position is that they skipped testing the days field for
end-of-year because it would have meant leaving off the landing gear, so
you might not be the best investigator we could have on this case.
:)
ken
* Roger Boisjoly, a Thiokol staff engineer, arguing in vain against the
final, fatal launch of the Challenger because of the precise problem
that destroyed it: booster O-rings not sealing reliably when cold.
http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/mgt/DM.case.html
--
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm
"Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five
years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally
won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
In article <·················@newsfe09.lga>,
Ken Tilton <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Speaking of which, your suggestion that I might be lying is really
> charming,
Your suggestion that I might be somehow responsible for the flaw in the
space shuttle software was equally charming.
> >... And your continued
> > condescension towards people who have spent years of their lives in the
> > aerospace trenches is extremely annoying.
>
> Is that not the mistake that killed fourteen people for no reason?
> Drawing the wagons in a circle and refusing to analyze the process? That
> is all I did.
Fortunately, with the advent of Google Groups it is not so easy to
rewrite history. What you did was not offer constructive criticism of
the process (which is not surprising since you seem to know nothing
about the process) but instead simply held up the *result* of the
process up to ridicule. In fact, here in its entirety is what you had
to say about the matter in your first post:
"Speechlessly, kt "
And the second:
"We gotta get them onto Lisp for that project. And Cells."
That is not what I would call a well-considered analysis of the problem.
> What they found /both times/ was that the process failed.
> You paint my bug post mortem as antagonistic, hoping to stifle it.
Your post-mortem *is* antagonistic (to say nothing of idiotic). But I
do not wish to stifle it; I believe in free speech. I merely want to
set the record straight just on the off chance that there are any
lurkers out there who still labor under the mistaken impression that you
have a clue.
> I imagine such managerial annoyance is exactly
> how people were intimidated into not saying what needed to be said.
That is entirely possible. But it also shuts down a lot of idiots who
would derail the process altogether if every one of them got a full
hearing.
> What NASA needs to do (if my guess at a post-mortem is right) is simply
> publish the post-mortem: "this problem might have been noticed if the
> coder was less robotic. Programmers still have to adhere to the spec
> religiously and push back on possible problems thru the proper channels,
> but they should not turn off their brains." This is a process fix, not
> --what was your spin?--condescension or blame.
But your process fix won't work. It is based on ignorance and false
assumptions. In this case it is based on the assumption that the
problem was evident from the coder's point of view. It almost certainly
wasn't. The problem is not that the shuttle computers will crash at
12:01 on Jan 1. The problem is that the time representation used on
board and on the ground are different. And since the teams that wrote
the on-board and ground software were almost certainly disjoint, it is
not likely that any one coder would have noticed this.
> Btw, if you have any friends left at NASA, I would be interested in
> knowing how often the coders look down and say, "This is away from
> goodness."* If it is commonplace, my hypothesis starts to crumble.
It happens all the time.
> It would be really great then if you could ask for the post mortem on the
> bug itself, since the article Paolo found mentioned they always review
> the process when something sneaks thru.
Sorry, you'll have to do your own homework. Your favor bank with me is
overdrawn.
> Of course your position is that they skipped testing the days field for
> end-of-year because it would have meant leaving off the landing gear, so
> you might not be the best investigator we could have on this case.
This from the man who says that Cells is the Answer to Everything.
Personally, if I have to choose, I'll take the landing gear.
> * Roger Boisjoly, a Thiokol staff engineer, arguing in vain against the
> final, fatal launch of the Challenger because of the precise problem
> that destroyed it: booster O-rings not sealing reliably when cold.
>
> http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/mgt/DM.case.html
Right. No doubt you'll soon be reminding us that they laughed at
Galileo too. The difference between you and Roger is that Roger pointed
out the problem *before* it made the papers.
rg
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <FW4fh.4168$Ah6.3517@newsfe10.lga>
Ron Garret wrote:
> In fact, here in its entirety is what you had
> to say about the matter in your first post:
>
> "Speechlessly, kt "
I can't believe I said that!....Hang on.
>
> And the second:
>
> "We gotta get them onto Lisp for that project. And Cells."
And the third one:
"That they have/had a fine record on software reliability is beyond
dispute, what is interesting is how the process failed."
ken
--
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm
"Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five
years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally
won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
In article <···················@newsfe10.lga>,
Ken Tilton <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ron Garret wrote:
> > In fact, here in its entirety is what you had
> > to say about the matter in your first post:
> >
> > "Speechlessly, kt "
>
> I can't believe I said that!....Hang on.
>
> >
> > And the second:
> >
> > "We gotta get them onto Lisp for that project. And Cells."
>
> And the third one:
No, the quote you cite was actually from your eleventh post in that
thread.
> what is interesting is how the process failed."
What makes you think the process failed? Going back to that post that
you cited hoping it would pull your sorry ass out of the fire:
> where the huge software design/code+test/attack-test sequence failed
> to catch a trivial, classic boundary condition gaffe.
No. There is no "boundary condition gaffe." There is only two
different representations of time being used in two different parts of
the system (and which is almost certainly a justifiable design decision
in light of the resource constraints under which the engineers had to
work).
Given that you don't even understand what actually happened (let alone
how and why it happened), why should anyone lend any credence to
anything you have to say on the matter? And while I'm at it, do you
really think that your ignorant rants (to say nothing of your ad-hominem
cheap shots) are going to make it any easier to promote the use of Lisp
anywhere, let alone at NASA?
The only one committing stupid gaffes here is you.
rg
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <Rw6fh.296$Vq.238@newsfe12.lga>
Ron Garret wrote:
> No, the quote you cite was actually from your eleventh post in that
> thread.
So I did not say it? But I did say "speechlessly"?
peace.out.ken
--
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm
"Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five
years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally
won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
From: Alain Picard
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87ejr5jwtz.fsf@memetrics.com>
Ron Garret <·········@flownet.com> writes:
> Given that you don't even understand what actually happened (let alone
> how and why it happened), why should anyone lend any credence to
> anything you have to say on the matter?
Oh, don't worry---nobody does. Well, nobody that matters, anyhow.
> And while I'm at it, do you
> really think that your ignorant rants (to say nothing of your ad-hominem
> cheap shots) are going to make it any easier to promote the use of Lisp
> anywhere, let alone at NASA?
This of course is a worse problem. But I'm hoping that "We won't use
lisp because the lisp newsgroup seems filled with idiotic doofuses" is
pretty low down the list of why a language gets chosen, but hey, that's
just a hope. Management decisions can get made for the strangest
choices...
For the record: I've worked on an instrumentation project, once,
and it was damn hard. And it wasn't even a hard real-time system.
My impresssion is that a regular program requires effort X,
then a program which must correctly control some hardware is X^2.
One which must do so in hard real time is probably like X^4, and
one which must do so in space, where you can't get at it, which
must run on special hardware, and survive launch, etc, is like X^10.
That anyone who has never worked in this area can think to offer
(condescending, no less!) advice on how "those folks" should do their
jobs is, to me, arrogant beyond belief.
From: Thomas A. Russ
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <ymimz5tkm1h.fsf@sevak.isi.edu>
Alain Picard <············@memetrics.com> writes:
> For the record: I've worked on an instrumentation project, once,
> and it was damn hard. And it wasn't even a hard real-time system.
> My impresssion is that a regular program requires effort X,
> then a program which must correctly control some hardware is X^2.
> One which must do so in hard real time is probably like X^4, and
> one which must do so in space, where you can't get at it, which
> must run on special hardware, and survive launch, etc, is like X^10.
Well, at least it's only polynomial difficulty.... ;-)
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
From: Alain Picard
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87ejr39ip2.fsf@memetrics.com>
···@sevak.isi.edu (Thomas A. Russ) writes:
> Well, at least it's only polynomial difficulty.... ;-)
Hey -- I said it was HARD --- not NP-HARD! ;-)
From: Andreas Thiele
Subject: Re: help persuading/reassuring a client that I should use Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <el71v8$1vp$03$1@news.t-online.com>
"Pascal Bourguignon" <···@informatimago.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag ···················@thalassa.informatimago.com...
> "David" <······@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>> ...
>> The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
>> use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
>> for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
>> say to them?
>
> I'm in the market to maintain Common Lisp applications.
> So you can count +1 substitute.
> ...
You can further increment this counter by one :))
Andreas
Hi David
You can let them know that there is a company out there that regularly
takes on jobs like you describe and we will back you up if you get
stuck.
Paul
hyperstring.net
David wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wonder if anyone could give me some advice. There's a job I've just
> taken on (a database driven web based virtual insurance policy thing)
> which someone else had started previously in Java, but not got very far
> at all and then walked away from. The previous programmer seemed to
> generate an awful lot of code (using standard Java frameworks) which
> achieved very little. Probably nothing in fact :)
>
> Anyway, I'd really like to do it lisp, because I'm sure it would be
> much quicker (basically I don't think I'd have time to do it in Java,
> and I definitely wouldn't want to do it in PHP or Perl or anything).
> The system will be in use for some time, and it's moderately complex.
>
> The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
> use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
> for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
> say to them?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -- David
Cool. I'll bear that in mind. The client now seems to be reassured that
All Is Well, so I've started on the work.
It's good to be able to tell them that there are other Lisp developers
out there.
Thanks,
-- David
On Dec 10, 7:33 pm, "hyperstring.net ltd"
<············@hyperstring.net> wrote:
> Hi David
>
> You can let them know that there is a company out there that regularly
> takes on jobs like you describe and we will back you up if you get
> stuck.
>
> Paul
> hyperstring.net
>
> David wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> > I wonder if anyone could give me some advice. There's a job I've just
> > taken on (a database driven web based virtual insurance policy thing)
> > which someone else had started previously in Java, but not got very far
> > at all and then walked away from. The previous programmer seemed to
> > generate an awful lot of code (using standard Java frameworks) which
> > achieved very little. Probably nothing in fact :)
>
> > Anyway, I'd really like to do it lisp, because I'm sure it would be
> > much quicker (basically I don't think I'd have time to do it in Java,
> > and I definitely wouldn't want to do it in PHP or Perl or anything).
> > The system will be in use for some time, and it's moderately complex.
>
> > The client has asked me for reassurance that CL is a good language to
> > use and that it could be picked up by another developer in the future
> > for maintenance/enhancement. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could
> > say to them?
>
> > Thanks,
>
> > -- David